DGT Pegasus Review After Two and a Half Years

I’m an avid chess player, and I find both online and in-person chess equally enjoyable. Electronic, online-capable chessboards seem like a natural fit because they combine the online playerbase of a site like Chess.com with a physical board and pieces. You make your moves on the board, and it relays that move to your preferred chess server. Your opponent then makes their move, and the board, in some way or another, indicates their move. You execute that move on the physical board in front of you, and the cycle repeats. Some boards even move your opponent’s pieces for you.

In my quest to find the perfect example of this hybrid setup, I’ve now tried three of these boards: the Square Off Pro, the DGT Pegasus, and the Chessnut Air. This in-depth review will focus on the DGT Pegasus.

I eagerly awaited the Pegasus from the day it was announced. I followed a massive thread about the board on the Hiarcs chess forum. At the time, the only board of this type I had tried was the Square Off Pro, and it was a little buggy, the app made my phone a little too hot, and it was too big for my desk. The Pegasus is significantly smaller (35 x 35 cm as opposed to a full sized tournament board) and I looked forward to this. It’s also made my DGT, a name which is synonymous with electronic chess boards. How could it miss?

I ordered the Pegasus day it became available in December of 2021 for $349. I believe this is still the going price. The canvas bag was an additional $69. It all arrived in very nice, premium feeling packaging. The black and white pieces were stored together, however, and the black pieces scuffed up the white pieces a little during shipping I assume. However it happened, the black definitely rubs off on the white.

As stated earlier, the board is 35 x 35 cm. It weighs just over two pounds at 34.6 oz. It’s a nice size and weight and feels of good construction. The whole board has a monochromatic style. The squares are gray and white, the pieces are black and white, and the base of the board is black. The seemingly unweighted pieces, save for magnets that are used for placement recognition by the board, have a modern twist on the classic Staunton design that I enjoy. It’s a very attractive package.

Like the Square Off Pro, the Pegasus connects to your phone via Bluetooth. Unlike the Square Off Pro, on iOS, it’s only compatible with Lichess. My understanding is that you can use it with Chess.com on Android. Per DGT’s website, “Chess.com has its own app that works with Pegasus. Chess.com functions with Android mobile devices and not yet iOS.” This is a pretty big limitation in my opinion.

When the board arrived, the app was in terrible shape. Like the Square Off Pro, it uses lights to indicate the piece being moved as well as the destination square. If one of your pieces was on the opponent’s destination square, they’ve captured that piece. At the time of launch of the application, the board would frequently become unresponsive and random lights would remain lit that had no apparent relation to what was happening in the game. Word was DGT had outsourced that application and it was rushed and DGT was not happy with the results. If my information is correct, DGT hired an in-house team to completely rebuild the application from the ground up. This new app launched months later to reports of moderate improvement. Myself? In the interest of honesty, I must report that I’ve barely noticed any improvement. I still struggle to get through a few games of rapid chess without a catastrophic failure. The board still becomes unresponsive with random lights flashing.

The application does allow you to play locally over the board and export a PGN for analysis. However, I have not tested this feature.

Overall, coming from a name like DGT, I expected this product to be best in class. It has a ton of things going for it. I love the aesthetic design. The build quality is excellent. DGT gives me the impression that they care about this product. The software simply just isn’t there yet. It needs native Chess.com support for iOS. They also need to nail down whatever gremlin makes the board go unresponsive.

DGT is a great company and I’m holding out hope for this product, but so far the Pegasus has been an exercise in frustration. I will be following it’s development for the foreseeable future and I’ll be revisiting it often.